Well, I actually feel pretty proud of myself for finishing, even though I have gone way past my four months. I went through a pretty busy period, and I think I was not only too busy to get back to Discover 2/0, I was also digesting and absorbing what I had learned so far. It really is a lot to cover, and there were moments when I felt completely bogged down, but I always knew I would come back to it and finish.

Of the 23 "things", I found many of them fascinating and useful. For example, I am now using Facebook, Flickr, and Del.icio.us regularly. I enjoyed others, such as blogging and podcasting, but I need to live with these for awhile to see how I might incorporate them into my life. There were others I just found weird, like Meebo and Twitter. I can't see how they would ever be useful or fun. But I will stay openminded, and anyway, at least now I know what they are.

I think this 23-thing exercise is very important for library workers. We really must stay abreast of developments in the information world if we are to be able to offer good customer service. Things are changing rapidly, and there is a tendency to get so caught up in the routines of life and work that we sometimes postpone exploring new things. This was a (almost) painless, fun way to push past our comfort level, expand our horizons, and develop our professional skills! Now if I just had that day off coming too...

Twitter & Tumblr

I signed up for both Twitter and Tumblr and created posts. I will probably add Twitter as an application on my Facebook account, just for fun. As far as using it in the library world, I don't know. I saw that one library uses it to promote their programs, by creating short "tweets" for all their activities. Maybe that's a good idea. It depends on whether anybody would look at it.

I was more intrigued with Tumblr, and plan to use it a fair amount. I see how this could be very handy for gathering things you find on the internet and putting them together in one place where you can share them with others, something like Del.icio.us. I feel like I've come full circle in Discover 2.0, because Del.icio.us, where I started, and Tumblr, where I am now finishing, are similar in how I would plan to use them. If I were going to have a library blog that I shared with the public, I would use Tumblr.

Fun with Video

I spent way more time than was wise on this one. For one thing, it's very fun and somewhat addictive. Also though, I was finding some of it quite difficult. For example, I wanted to post one of the videos I found on my blog, but never figured it out, and finally realized this is taking up all of my day off. Time to just write the blog and get on with my life.

I spent most of my time looking for videos about people in Iran. There are lots of great ones, and I emailed several to various people. I noticed that YouTube has a feature where you can respond to a video with another video, besides responding with text. I was going to post an example of that on this blog, but as I say, never could make it work.

One of the suggested links for this Item #21 is still in development, but otherwise, I looked at all the links, read the articles, posted some of them to Del.icio.us, and ran my little search for Iran videos in all the suggested video sites. Very fun stuff!

Podcasting

I subscribed to a Denver Public Library podcast where they read children's books. It's very cute, and seems like a natural thing for a library to do.

On the other hand, nothing can possibly replace a person, whether parent or library staff, reading to a child. The human contact, the actual voice, not to mention the book and its illustrations, contribute to a priceless experience for a child, and the interaction enriches the reader as well.

So while this podcast from the library could be useful for helping a parent learn about new children's books, or even for a child to sit and listen to, I would think something like Tumblebooks would be preferable for these purposes, because of the illustrations.

This exercise was useful, because I did finally learn what a podcast is, and I can see it as a possible tool for libraries to perhaps get some sort of message out, such as a speech by the library director or maybe a board meeting or training for staff, but I'm curious about just how much use the Denver Public Library gets of it's children's book podcasts.

Item # 19

I like Pandora a lot. I started by typing in Bob Dylan and it started playing Tangled Up in Blue. I then told it that I like that song, and it started putting together other artists and songs that I might like. This would be very handy for when I am working on the computer, but not online, as it came out of Pandora when I went back to Discover 2.0. I had thought I could listen while I continued to work. I'm sure there's a way to do that, I just don't have the time to figure it out right now!

I am also glad to know about the music genome project,which is similar, and also the gutenberg project. These are really amazing undertakings.

The other one I really liked was Mango, although I wish they had more languages. I am looking for a way to study Farsi online, but have not found it yet - certainly not on Mango.

I do think Mango would be good for the library to link to the electronic resources, since it's free. The only problem is that people would probably want to talk out loud as they went through it, which could be problematic in the library.

I also think Pandora, last.fm, and imeem would be good to have at a listening station. I think teens, especially, would enjoy their features and functionality.

Google Docs

I decided to make a spreadsheet using Google Docs that I could use to keep track of people I am inviting on a group trip. Since there are many possible group members, and they are all in various stages of "thinking about it", I am using the spreadsheet to remind myself of who I have asked, and whether they have committed to it, turned it down, or are still thinking about it. Here is a link to my spreadsheet:

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pHiVj6K1f7aXapzjnCMpyBg

I had to create this link by copy and paste. I never could see how to publish it directly from Google into my blog. I did publish it onto the web for the whole world to see. It's a hypothetical trip, and it would not have been my choice to do it that way, but either I am very dense or the settings have changed without updating the Help information. I spent a fair amount of time fooling around with it, and finally decided to just get the job done and do it this way.

I actually did create a real spreadsheet on GoogleDocs for this exact purpose of maintaining a group list for a trip I am planning. I was going to publish that one to my blog, but in the month since I created it, it seems to have disappeared from GoogleDocs. Another shocker. I will probably go back and recreate it, but if they disappear like that, it hardly seems worth it.

This application seems to have potential, but I would definitely need to work with it more to feel comfortable with it!

Item 17 - Cool Stuff

I tried several of the so-called "cool things" and found the first few to be not so cool for me. For example, when I typed my blog's URL into the website that tells you its reading level, I got a message that said "We were unable to check the URL you entered."

I tried Scrabulous, but got stuck just when I was getting the hang of it, on the second game, when it wouldn't give me any more tiles or give me my points. There was a little message there that said it was a problem with my wireless network. That promised to be not worth my time delving into any farther.

I spent some time looking around in Technorati, but don't feel that I really get blogging, and I definitely don't feel that I understand Technorati, so I wandered back out of there after only a few minutes.

I finally ended up playing Wordshoot for a while. That is kind of fun, although I don't really like shooting and getting shot at. I did get my score up to 35,360, with 94% accuracy and 235 words spelled correctly!

On that note, I decided to rest on my laurels and post this blog note.